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Where foggy friends kick back…

Gluten Free day 3

I know I was going to post next about meditation, but something really interesting came up.

In the diet post, I talk about the research on the role of gluten in autoimmune conditions and chronic pain.

Well, here’s an update.

I decided to bite the bullet and try going gluten free myself.

So, for the last two days, I’ve completely eliminated wheat from my diet. I otherwise eat healthy so it wasn’t that big a jump for me as it may be for many.

I woke up with a mysterious sore throat and stuffy nose on the third day of my semi-paleo no-gluten experiment. That’s weird because I almost never get sick. (I know, I know. It’s pretty ironic :p )

But it gets weirder. That night, I slept easily at midnight, even though falling asleep has always been a struggle for me.

I also woke up the next morning at 4.30 am, but extremely relaxed and well rested. I haven’t spontaneously woken up this early in years. It has been impossible.

But the icing on the cake : Extremely low morning stiffness.

Morning stiffness has long been a pet peeve of mine, and probably is for you too. It is a major time and productivity drain. I spend about 3-4 hours every morning just alternately stretching and resting, trying to get free enough to function the rest of the day.

And once you go to sleep (or even take a nap), you have to do it all over again.

And you have to force yourself to do it through the pain. No joke.

Placebo? Could be.

But if any of you who have experienced morning stiffness personally, you know there’s nothing woolly or subtle about that. 😀

The feeling that your limbs and joints have rusted solid overnight is as real as it gets.

This “experiment”, if you want to call it that, is of course not strict. But I have tried to control for all variables except two.

1. Dinner

Though I eat fruit for breakfast, a huge primal salad and yoghurt for lunch, and nuts to snack on throughout the day, for dinner I just eat whatever’s cooking, within reason, of course. This saves me time and energy which I don’t really have.

2. Alan Watkins breathing exercise.

Check out this TEDx video featuring Dr. Alan Watkins. In it, he talks about how your emotions and behaviour are actually a function of your physiological state.
Basically, if your body is out of balance, you will feel like sh**. Ring a bell? 😉

In part 2, he shows us a breathing exercise to temper the stress response which I have now started doing. I highly recommend you check it out.

So I am on a one week no gluten semi-paleo diet, and tracking my mood, anxiety, pain and energy levels four times a day, and will have the results for you in a weeks time.

Have you tried eliminating gluten from your diet? How did it go for you? Leave a comment.

7 thoughts on “Gluten Free day 3”

I have ME/CFS and when I eliminated gluten from my diet most of my symptoms disappeared. I fear fruit may be causing your morning stiffness. Well, the sugar in the fruit. Try eliminating all sugar (including fruit and veg) alongside being gluten-free and see if it helps, it did me. When I am gluten, dairy, soya, sugar free I dont get any symptoms at all and Ive heard this for other people too. http://fairyaboutme.wordpress.com/

Hey! Thank you for sharing your experience. I also apologize for replying so late, but my body’s reaction after cutting out gluten threw me off for the last few days. 🙂
You are right. After so much success just cutting gluten from my diet, I can’t imagine what other foods don’t agree with me. And yes, sugar and simple carbs seem to be a MAJOR factor in causing extended inflammatory conditions in the body.
I just might have to experiment with fruit next.

Good luck! Fruit hits me really badly so be careful, apples seem to be the worst. Look up fructose-glucose ratio. There is a page on wikipedia (I forget its name) that discusses this and basically says you need sugar products with a higher glucose to fructose ratio than the other way around. Both sugars affect me but if I stick to that rule the symptoms are a bit less. Again, good luck.

I have completely eliminated gluten from my diet about 2 weeks ago and i can say i feel great and i love it. i can still find most of the foods i love in gluten free form. Anyway I totally support gluten free lifestyle changes and i will be posting about gluten and the effects of it on my true health blog http://teamyolotruehealth.wordpress.com/